MONTREAL-BASED RESTAURANTS STRUGGLE IN TORONTO, BUT BUONANOTTE HOPES TO BUCK THAT TREND.
MONTREAL’S CULINARY SAVOIR FAIRE has not often translated into success in Toronto, but Buonanotte and Liquid Nutrition are hoping to buck the odds with the help of local partners
Toronto makes, Toronto breaks.
For Montreal restaurateurs and fancy food purveyors, Canada’s biggest metropolis can be a difficult place to set up a new kitchen.
Unless, that is, they have a key ingredient: a local partner who knows the market and can translate Montreal culinary savoir faire into Hogtown success.
Go it alone, and you’re headed for the Dumpster. To wit: M:brgr, an upscale burger joint, had no local help, and closed its grill in Toronto’s entertainment district after just four months;
MBCo (Montreal Bread Co.) flopped in Rosedale;
Spice Safar shuttered its café in the fashion district;
And, going further back, Le Bifthèque and Moishe’s fled the financial district.
Wary of failure, newer ventures are easing into Toronto in a safer way.
Smoothie chain Liquid Nutrition got out of running its own downtown outlet, found a partner to open franchises instead, and now keeps watch from a new head office in Oakville.
Swank Italian resto-nightclub Buonanotte found a well-known Toronto restaurateur to buy the licence to its brand and share administration of their new location, opening Jan. 22.
“Toronto was always an obvious growth market for us,” said Max Lecas, one of four owners of Buonanotte, a fixture of Montreal’s Main for the past 21 years.
“Every time there’s a long weekend, every time there’s some special reason to come to Montreal, we always get a huge Toronto clientele.
“And they were always asking us, ‘When are you going to open in Toronto?’ Finally someone approached us, and a team of promoters and investors made it happen.”
That “someone” was Charles Khabouth, media-darling owner of nightclubs and restaurants, founder of INK Entertainment, long known as Toronto’s “king of clubs.”
“We have a licensing and management agreement,” Lecas said of the new Toronto venture.
“We’ve licensed our name, our product, our recipes and our know-how. We’re in charge of the management, but we have no equity in the business.”
The 4,500-square-foot restaurant — on Mercer St. across from another Quebec export, the Hôtel Le Germain — has 150 seats, a capacity of 300 people, and 80 employees.
It had the first of a dozen “soft openings” — by invitation only — on Dec. 27 and New Year’s Eve, and is now fine-tuning its menu for an official public opening in 10 days.
The trick to breaking into and succeeding in the Toronto market is to be humble and not to flaunt your Montreal success — and finding a local partner is a must, Lecas said.
“You don’t want to go with a know-it-all attitude — far from it. And one of the most important things for me was to associate with a group from Toronto.
“We needed someone who could run the place and handle problems when we’re not there. We won’t be successful if we don’t have Toronto blood filling the restaurant.”
That realization came too late for some Montrealers.
M: brgr founder and owner Jeff Dichter is one who got burned. In 2011, after only four months in business, he closed his gourmet burger outlet at King St. W. and Spadina Ave.
“What happened? We just weren’t doing enough sales,” he said of the restaurant, whose signature burger was made with Kobe beef and cost $100.
“I don’t know why (sales were slow); it’s hard to say. We had a good location; we thought we’d do twice as well as (the Drummond St. location) in Montreal.
“The one thing we didn’t do, and probably with hindsight we should have done, is have a local partner,” he added regretfully.
“If we had had someone involved with us who knew the clientele and could fill the space quicker, I think it might have been better.
“That was the one thing that we didn’t have, and I can only think it would have made a difference. It was a piece of the puzzle we didn’t think of.”
Another restaurant that tested the Toronto market and failed is Le Bifthèque. It used to operate in the city’s financial district, but closed several years ago.
“Toronto is a different market — I can’t pinpoint it but, trust me, it’s different,” said the chain’s founder, Michael Seltzer, who sold the business in 2005 before it went bankrupt.
“The French Canadian is a fabulous customer, and you know, there are no French Canadians in Toronto,” Selzter said from north of Miami at Gamaroff ’s Bar and Grill, which he co-owns.
Le Bifthèque’s original Montreal location, on Côte de Liesse Rd. in St-Laurent, recently reopened after a multimillion-dollar renovation, with Selzter in charge.
“What can I tell you? Montrealers are different,” he said.
“When they go out to eat, they want to have a good time,” said Seltzer, who’s also looking at franchising in Quebec City, St-Sauveur and the South Shore. “Toronto? It’s not the same.” Moishe’s steak house also took a stab at Toronto, way back in 1997, occupying two floors of 72-storey First Canadian Place, Canada’s highest building.
But like the others, the restaurant didn’t last long — less than two years.
“That was a long time ago,” said Moishe’s owner, Lenny Lighter, declining to talk about it. “Whatever market it was then is probably not what it is now, so I think I’d better pass.”
Back in Montreal, the eating is easy — sort of.
There’s no question this city is a great place to start a restaurant. The city is a foodie paradise, people dine out a lot and have sophisticated tastes, and prices are reasonable.
“Montreal is one of the most competitive hospitality-and-food markets in North America,” said Liquid Nutrition president Glenn Young, who’s from Toronto.
(The business was founded in 2005 by Quebec singer Chantal Chamandy and her husband and manager, Greg Chamandy, co-founder of Gildan Activewear.)
“The competition here allows great restaurateurs to perfect their skills and their product offering and be able to export it outside Quebec,” Young said.
But there’s also a downside that makes Toronto seem like a different kind of paradise by comparison: a free-market paradise.
“It’s exciting and very energizing to go into such a big market,” Lecas said. “Taxes and regulations are way more lax — way more lax.”
There are no multiple liquor licences within the same establishment, for example, nor irritants like the new Parti Québécois government’s retroactive tax on cellared wines.
“The main thing that’s different are the alcohol regulations,” Dichter said. “In Toronto, you don’t need to sell food in order to sell alcohol; it just has to be on the menu.”
Whatever you’re serving, it’s important to adapt to the local market, said Young, whose chain partnered with franchise developer Francorp Inc. in 2010 to grow outside Quebec.
Liquid Nutrition now has two outlets in Toronto and plans to open another two shortly and, thinking big, 350 more across North America in the next five years.
“We offer a very simple, functional beverage product, and we don’t see a lot of competition doing exactly what we’re doing, which is selling wellness,” Young said.
Before it went into franchising 18 months ago, Liquid Nutrition ran its own outlet in downtown Toronto, at the corner of Queen St. W. and Spadina. When the lease ran out, they closed.
“It was a challenge, being one store — you’re a bit orphaned,
“Montrealers aren’t particularly fond of Toronto, but Torontonians love everything about Montreal.”
MAX LECAS, OF BUONANOTTE
right?” Young said. “In Montreal, we’ve had six or seven stores and that allowed us to build brand equity.
“In Toronto, we had to find a partner to commit to a multiple number of stores, a minimum of 10. If you’re a stand-alone, just a one-off, it’s more difficult.
“It took us almost five years before we decided we could export this brand outside of Montreal,” he added.
“We spent a lot of time and a lot of money to get it to the point where we felt that it could be exportable.”
It can be a two-way street, the restaurant business: Montrealers open in Toronto, and Torontonians open in Montreal.
Khabouth, for example, plans to open a new La Société bistro in April in the luxury Loews Hôtel Vogue on Mountain St., a culinary tale of two cities.
“It’s like we crossed each other on the (Highway) 401 and gave each other a high-five and wished ourselves luck,” Lecas said.
“It’s funny. Montrealers aren’t particularly fond of Toronto, but Torontonians love everything about Montreal. It’s a weird relationship that we have, you know?”